Plague-pocked test subjects. Fever has boiled their brains into aggressive delusions.
2
Citizens of a city long ago destroyed in an earthquake,
hybridized through lost generations with the great worms which caused
the earthquake.
3
Damned souls wriggled up through seams and cracks in
the roof of Hell. In their ascent they've reclaimed some semblance of
life, but their minds remain steeped in the exquisite cruelties of
perdition. Their ragged, roasted flesh will forever bear the marks of
their many torments.
4
Clacking skeletons wrapped in colourful, gelatinous flesh. The effluvia of certain distasteful alchemical operations.
5
Spindly, bug-eyed things fallen from a passing comet.
Exposure to the tellurian energies of the surface is slowly melting
them, driving them mad with pain.
6
Troglodytic mutants, the descendants of miners twisted
into pallid, hairless parodies of the human form by the radiation of
cthonic crystals.
7
Giant wasps that walk on their hind legs. Can fly short
distances. Wear garments of pulped bone and ligaments. Seek
surface-dwellers to serve as hosts for their parasitic young.
8
A rogue tribe of alraunes, plants grown in human form as servants without animal weaknesses like passion, fatigue, and mercy.
9
Spawn of the deepeset, densest shadows. Filled with antipathy towards the light and those dependent on it.
10
Uncanny children, fairy-bitten from womb to glamoured pubescence. Whatever they're becoming, it's not quite human.
11
Reassembled people, made from all the right parts in all the wrong places. Lash out in confusion at their own existence.
12
Beautiful, heartless albinos. Eat the flesh of other
mortals to convert those mortals into more of them. They see this as the
highest good.
13
Serpents coiled and braided into limbs, a torso, and a head of bristling fangs.
14
Craggy bruisers of living stone. Splitting violence is how they reproduce, communicate, and celebrate.
15
Natural spirits of grove and dale, dragged into alien
depths by the slow grinding of geology. Down in the dark they've become
cold, cruel, and utterly detached from what they once were.
16
The evacuated waste of the justly executed, risen to the form and fiendishness of their forebears.
17
Urchin-men, creatures of pins and needles and five-lobed mouths.
18
Ancient and immortal geriatrics. Long centuries have
left them jaded to everything but living in hovels and inflicting brutal
violence on each other and trespassers.
19
Faded refugees from ending dreams, slipped through
gates of horn and ivory into the waking world. This reality is
incompatible with their own. They must remind wakeful sorts of their own
existence or else disappear. The trauma they inflict leaves the most
enduring impressions.
20
Lamarckian supersoldiers, adapted over a lifetime to the battlefield, passing their adaptions to their child-recruits.
D20
These C.H.U.D.s Are Especially Dangerous...
1
Because each time you kill one you receive a cumulative curse.
2
When they fight in the dark. Each is extensively trained in blind combat.
3
Because everything they carry is envenomed. Weapons, clothing, treasure, everything.
4
Because they've packed the dungeon with explosives as a last resort.
5
Because they maintain political connections with other local groups of monsters.
6
Because they build fiendishly devious traps.
7
Because when injured they enter into a berserker rage.
8
Because the less powerful monsters of the dungeon fear and obey them.
9
Because their leaders can metamorphose into a deadlier, short-lived form.
10
When they're given time to plan, less so when they're forced to improvise.
11
Because they're accustomed to using the dungeon's terrain to aid hit-and-run tactics.
12
When they're allowed to merge into a larger, more powerful entity.
13
Because each group is accompanied by a child who's been stuffed near to bursting with demons.
14
If left alive, as they'll dedicate the rest of their lives to wreaking vengeance.
15
Because each wears a bell that gives off an impossible
note. The more you hear them ringing, the more you'll start to think
like the C.H.U.D.s wearing them.
16
Only because they've got their hands on some volatile magic.
17
Because some obscure dogma makes them sacred to a local religion, which would seek recompense if they were harmed.
18
Because if they kill you they'll enslave your corpse.
19
Because they've got loyal agents in nearby settlements.
20
Because the more you fear them the more powerful they become.
D20
These C.H.U.D.s Inhabit A Part Of This Dungeon...
1
That's partially flooded, very humid. These C.H.U.D.s all carry a contagious symbiotic mold that makes them amphibious.
2
Within a pocket of accelerated time. The detritus of countle\ss ancestors litters their dens.
3
That's gravitationally inverted. They live on the
ceiling, use an elaborate rope-and-pulley system to cross over to
sections with normal gravity.
4
They share with other monsters in an uneasy truce. A sign of weakness by any side would provoke attack.
5
Within a folded section of space. Far larger on the inside than it appears from the outside.
6
That's mired with illusions.
7
Which borders a larger cave system. They sporadically trade and war with the cave's inhabitants.
8
That's full of useful and potentially dangerous magical flora.
9
With a vantage point over an entrance or exit to the dungeon.
10
That's alive in its own right.
11
That's well-concealed from casual observers.
12
Mounted on ooze-bearings, which move it around within the larger structure.
13
Integrated with a pneumatic pipe system that can deliver personnel and packages rapidly to many locations in the dungeon.
14
Rife with harmonious resonance, which makes it a safe location to rest by repelling other wandering monsters.
15
Which contains a secret door to a treasure-vault, unknown to the C.H.U.D.s.
16
They're barely able to hold against a tide of creeping vermin.
17
They've renovated themselves from the original structure.
18
Containing murals, artifacts, and the like which imply the story of how the dungeon came to be inhabited by monsters.
19
Awash with thaumological distortions. Magic doesn't work quite right there.
20
Which was built as a copy of a famous structure on the surface.
D20
These C.H.U.D.s Are In This Dungeon...
1
Because they’ve formed a cult around its most powerful monster.
2
Because they've adopted it as their home. They'll defend their place here to the last.
3
Searching for a lost artifact made by their kind.
4
Hiding from enemies on the surface.
5
As part of a monastic retreat from worldly temptations.
6
Because their high priest had a prophetic dream wherein the dungeon figured significantly.
7
For a centennarian festival.
8
Prospecting for a rare resource.
9
On a diplomatic mission.
10
Hunting a great beast for prestige among their tribe.
11
To seal a cursed treasure in its depths.
12
To release their eldritch master trapped within.
13
Because sunlight burns them like acid.
14
Using it as a temporary shelter along a migratory route.
15
Because this is where they first entered the world, and they're not sure where else to go.
16
Seeking a medicinal fungus to cure a hideous disease their beloved leader is suffering from.
17
Because they believe the outside world is full of corruptive taint.
18
Because they believe the outside world has been destroyed in the apocalypse.
19
Acting as mercenaries for a distant patron.
20
Because they fell into a dimensional rift elsewhere and ended up here.
D20
These C.H.U.D.s Tend To Treat Outsiders...
1
As irredeemable fools.
2
As pests worthy only of extermination.
3
As practice for their young warriors.
4
With paranoia.
5
With false, disarming friendliness.
6
As pitiable primitives in need of uplifting education.
7
As useful though non-sentient sources of worked goods and food.
8
As delectable delicacies.
9
As though they're all guilty of the same crimes.
10
According to baroque codes of honour and punishment.
11
With amiable distance during the day, genocidal disgust at night.
12
Gruffly, so long as the C.H.U.D.s don't believe they're trespassing. Trespassers will be made a fatal example of.
13
As logical contradictions which vex them to mania.
14
As the demons of their convoluted, improvisational religion.
15
With sociopathic pragmatism. As long as outsiders are
strong enough to defend themselves, the C.H.U.D.s will be willing to
trade or work with them.
16
As different people each time the C.H.U.D.s encounter them. Object permanence is not their strong suit.
17
According to how the outsiders have treated them.
18
As sources of endless entertainment.
19
With abundant generosity, which sours to murderous resentment if that generosity is not returned.
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